Estonian Admits to Participating in International Cyber-crime Scam

An Estonian national named Valeri Aleksejev, aged 32, admitted that he participated in one criminal operation on the Internet, victimizing 4m people globally, while causing losses valuing EUR 10m; reported softpedia.com dated February 4, 2013.

Of the 6 persons the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested during November 2011 inside the Baltic region, Aleksejev was foremost and he also pleaded guilty to carrying out the crime.

Thereafter, during indictment, prosecutors stated that there were a number of components in the malicious operation of which one was "click-hijacking scam" wherein malicious software re-routed searchers the victims of infected PCs made towards websites the defendants designated. For instance, when end-users attempted at accessing the movie site of Netflix Inc or the iTunes site of Apple Inc via contaminated PCs, they actually landed on unaffiliated businesses' websites, the indictment revealed.

One other component was which, caused the substitution of genuine advertisements on online sites that The Wall Street Journal of New Corp.; Amazon.com Inc; or more operated, by ads which enabled the defendants to get payments, as per the prosecutors.

Incidentally, it was during 2007-11 that the scam was operated covering a full 4-yrs time.

Later, following the FBI investigation spanning 2 years through its 'Operation-Ghost-Click' specialists managed to shutdown the DNSChanger scheme. Instead they created tentative DNS systems that facilitated queries from contaminated PCs covering many months, a plan, which gave sufficient time to corporations for sanitizing contaminated systems.

Earlier, during running the scam, the defendants allegedly incurred $14m-or-so, according to prosecutors although William Stampur lawyer to Aleksejev stated that his client had no assets. Reuters.com reported this on February 1, 2013.

Meanwhile at the hearing, Aleksejev related to James Francis, Magistrate Judge that he helped stop the working of AV security updates on contaminated PCs; reported Reuters.com.

Notably, in the case labeled United States vs. Tsastsin et al, Manhattan District Court (USA), No.11-00878, while Aleksejev is to be sentenced not before May 31, his accomplice Anton Ivanov is now extradited whereas the other 4 suspects are going through the extradition process. There is one Russian too named Andrey Taame who's suspected but hasn't been apprehended.